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 Jane Austen was born December 16, 1775 at Steventon near Basingstoke in England, the seventh child of a country clergyman and his wife. George and Cassandra Austen educated their children primarily at home where they could benefit from the extensive library and the schoolroom atmosphere created by Mr. Austen’s live-in pupils. Jane’s closest friend was her only sister, Cassandra, almost three years her senior. Her brothers variously entered the militia, banking, the clergy, and one was adopted by wealthy cousins to be their heir.
When her father retired in 1801, she moved to Bath, and then on to various other locales with her mother after her father’s death in 1805. Unlike her heroines, Jane Austen never married, though she did receive several proposals.
In 1811, at the age of 35, Austen published Sense and Sensibility, which identified the author as “a Lady.” Pride and Prejudice followed in 1813, Mansfield Park in 1814, and Emma in 1815.
Austen died, most likely from cancer, on July 18, 1817, and a few days later was buried in Winchester Cathedral. She was 41 years old. Her gravestone, which is visited by hundreds of admirers each year, does not even mention that she was an author.
Her novels Persuasion and Northanger Abbey were published together in December 1817 with a “Biographical Notice” written by her brother Henry, in which Jane Austen was, for the first time in one of her novels, identified as the author of Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park, and Emma. Her novels have never been out of print.
A New Portrait of Jane Austen
The above portrait of Jane Austen was unveiled in 2002 by the Jane Austen Centre in Bath, England, which commissioned artist Melissa Dring to produce a new portrait of the author as she might have appeared during her time in Bath in 1801-06.
Melissa was trained as a portrait painter at the Royal Academy Schools, London and as a police forensic artist by the FBI in Washington, D.C. She combined the insights of portraiture with those of police forensic arts to recreate Austen’s likeness from historic artifacts, family portraits, and written descriptions.
In the article "The Face of Jane Austen" published by Jane Austen's Regency World Melissa says, “My new speculative likeness of Jane Austen fills the gap left by the paucity of authenticated representations of the author... I hope it will come to be accepted as a good portrait of her, despite being made 185 years after her death.” The article details her research and sketch process.
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